Top 60 EPA Quotes

The great fear that hung over the business community in the 1970s was death by regulation, and the great goal of the conservative movement, as it rose to triumph in the 1980s, was to remove that threat – to keep OSHA, the EPA, and the FTC from choking off entrepreneurship with their infernal meddling in the marketplace.

As Attorney General of Alabama, I have never hesitated to stand up to the EPA before when it was wrong.

Let’s shut down the EPA.

The fact is there are a lot of things happening at the federal level that are absolutely beyond the jurisdiction of the Constitution. This is power that should be shifted back to the states, whether it’s the EPA – there is no role at the federal level for the Department of Education.

The EPA has performed a very important role for us all.

The methods that EPA introduced after 1970 to reduce air-pollutant emissions worked for a while, but over time have become progressively less effective.

Without question, I’m not a fan of the EPA. The EPA has overstepped their boundaries each and every day. They get into areas they shouldn’t be involved in… the states have the right to regulate themselves if they have the ability to do so – and we do because we have the Department of Environmental Quality.

Climate change is not an excuse for the EPA to ignore the bounds of law and issue illegal regulations that will cost jobs, shutter industries, and have little to no positive impact on the environment.

EPA has a long history of relying on science that was not created by the agency itself. This often means that the science is not available to the public and, therefore, cannot be reproduced and verified.

The EPA code needs to set forth a clear, regular, and rational system of penalties for violations of its code, with the amount of the penalty set in proportion to the amount of pollutant released by a given defendant, and no penalties imposed in the absence of any pollutant released.

As soon as it was clear, in Copenhagen in 2009, that the Senate was blocking Obama from introducing meaningful climate legislation, the push was for him to use executive authority, use the EPA, use the tool of federal leases, and there was just a refusal to do it.

It should be noted that the EPA’s banning of methanol is categorically absurd from the point of view of environmental protection.

The EPA could act to open the transportation-fuel market to vigorous competition from natural gas as well as coal, biomass, and trash, by legalizing methanol. This would force oil prices down, expand the economy, and create millions of jobs.

EPA is committed to identifying new tools and providing accurate and up-to-date information to help the American public protect themselves and their families from the novel coronavirus.

‘Sue and settle’ involves the creation of environmental rules and regulations through lawsuits filed by environmental groups against the EPA, not through Congress or proper rule-making.

EPA’s Affordable Clean Energy rule (ACE), would restore the states’ proper role under the Clean Air Act and our system of federalism. Our plan would allow states to establish standards of performance that meet EPA emissions guidelines.

When I was mayor of Tulsa, Tulsa County was in nonattainment of the 1979 ozone NAAQS, so I have seen firsthand the economic impacts associated with the challenges of attainment and the legacy of EPA intervention that continues long after meeting the standard.

There’s been a false sense of security in the American people when it comes to environment issues and our water, because they believe that the EPA is there to protect us, and unfortunately, that system’s not working right now. They’re overburdened, understaffed, and underfunded.

There is a reason to have an agency called the EPA, and it has served an historical purpose I believe is vital to this country.

Information is not just something you download from the Web. The way trees grow and where birds choose to live are much better signs of water quality than all the data being collected by the EPA.

Dust is part of rural America. It is completely unreasonable for the EPA to put a price tag on communities for carrying out activities essential to their well-being. This is a prime example of federal regulations gone too far.

Every day, the hard-working men and women of Alabama’s Department of Environmental Management are on the ground, protecting Alabama’s rivers and lakes in a way that is beneficial to all. EPA should support them in that work, not make it more difficult.

I think people really understand that clean air and clean water and not having factories dumping their emissions into the atmosphere and into the rivers and into the sea has been a very good thing for America. EPA stands watch for very important principles that go all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt.

Back when the EPA proposed phasing out ozone-depleting CFCs, the chemical industry howled that refrigerators would fail in America’s supermarkets, hospitals and schools.

We can be thankful President Barack Obama is taking aim at one of the prime causes of climate change and extreme weather: air pollution. The EPA’s carbon pollution standards are the most significant step forward our country has ever taken to protect our health by addressing climate change.

When we have agencies like EPA shutting down businesses, I don’t trust them at all.

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA has the ability to more stringently regulate dust. If the EPA determines more stringent standards are necessary, family farmers and ranchers, as well as rural economies, would be devastated.

We notified the EPA 18 years ago that PFOA in drinking water presented a public health threat, and in 2019 there are still no federal regulatory limits.

We cannot afford the EPA’s continued expansion of red tape that is slowing economic growth and threatening to entangle millions of small businesses.

The EPA has a history of overreaching its authority.

The EPA issued the MATS rule in 2012, and it is the first national standard created to address power plant emissions of toxic air pollutants. Under MATS, power plants are required to install equipment to reduce emissions of specific pollutants, such as mercury and sulfur dioxide.

There are issues the EPA should be dealing with. When I talk about the EPA and its role with the states, it’s not an abolitionist view, that we don’t need that agency. It’s that the agency should act within the outlines established by Congress.

When you declare a ‘war on coal’ from a regulatory perspective, the question has to be asked: where’s that in the statute? Where did Congress empower the EPA to declare a war on coal?

Nearly every policy during the Obama years was anti-growth: tax increases; minimum-wage hikes; ObamaCare; Dodd-Frank regulations; massive debt spending; the Paris climate change accord; an EPA assault against American energy; massive expansions of food-stamps programs and more.

There was pressure on the EPA to come out with a drinking water guideline, which it did in 2016. And when that guideline came out, it spurred even more testing across the country, including by the Department of Defense.

EPA will set a national standard for greenhouse gas emissions that allows auto manufacturers to make cars that people both want and can afford – while still expanding environmental and safety benefits of newer cars.

As one of its first acts after coming into existence, the EPA banned the vital pesticide DDT.

There is no reason why EPA’s role should ebb and flow based on a particular administration or a particular administrator.

President after president has said energy independence is critical. But then you have the EPA tasked to go after American companies producing coal and penalizing them. You can’t have it both ways.

We need responsible regulations, not regulations that have gone wild. For example, the EPA has a rule that is going to be implemented Jan. 1, 2012, where they’re going to begin to regulate dust. That’s right, dust. It’s called PM 2.5. That is focusing on the wrong thing.

EPA can and should now focus on getting real results in the fight for clean air, land, and water.

Cuts in carbon emissions would mean significantly higher electricity prices. We think the American consumer would prefer not to be skinned by Obama’s EPA.

The Obama administration’s EPA ruling to cut carbon emissions at power plants is a direct affront to workers in states like Alabama, which not only rely upon coal-fired plants to generate most of their electricity but are also home to thousands of coal industry jobs.

I’m very concerned about the – I want to leave EPA in a better position than in which I found it, when I eventually do leave the agency.

Without the EPA and the national pollution safeguards it enforces, more children would have asthma. Our water would be less safe. More chemicals would poison our bodies. And more people would die prematurely from respiratory diseases and heart attacks.

However much we might sympathize or agree with EPA’s policy objectives, EPA may act only within the boundaries of its statutory authority.

Most lawsuits against the EPA historically have come either because of the agency’s lack of regard for a statute or because the EPA failed in an obligation or deadline.